


Mad World

by lunasenzanotte



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Hunger Games, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spanish National Team, Valencia CF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:29:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3315938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasenzanotte/pseuds/lunasenzanotte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The backstory of Silvilla in the Hunger Games universe (a spinoff from Never In Our Favor).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mad World

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Never In Our Favor](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1259197) by [lunasenzanotte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasenzanotte/pseuds/lunasenzanotte). 



_it's the season of scars and of wounds in the heart,_  
 _of feeling the full weight of our burdens._  
 _it's the season of bowing our heads in the wind_  
 _and knowing we are not alone in fear,_  
 _not alone in the dark._  
  
  
The boy looks pale and fragile in the cold, artificial light.  
  
Villa doesn‘t remember when the Victor of the Games last looked like this, skin clean, no burns, cuts nor bruises, hair free of tangles, nails maybe a bit too long but no dried blood under them. But what surprises him even more is how tiny and slender the boy actually is. The hard life in Valencia, the district where even children have to work hard to support their families, maybe is one of the reasons, but as far as Villa remembers, the boy has always looked like this. Easy prey for the stronger ones. Until now.  
  
When they drew his name, Villa half-expected someone to volunteer for him, but then remembered that volunteers didn’t exist in districts like Valencia. Nobody said anything, and David Silva stood on the platform until they drew the other tribute’s name and led them to the town hall. As far as Villa knows, nobody came to say goodbye to him.  
  
When they brought him back from the arena, he didn’t look much different from the boy who left, but Villa noticed the change. It was in his eyes, the gleam Villa remembered was gone and he knew it was forever. The eyes looking at him were the eyes of someone who won his life but lost his soul, and Villa already knows that the lives the Capitol took every year during the Games weren’t the worst thing. Those who lived lost even more.  
  
It takes him a moment to realize that David’s eyes are now open, looking at him and yet not really. It’s like David can see through him. He takes a few hesitant steps towards the bed. The hospital ward in the training center is eerily quiet. It’s meant to have only one patient, but never before was the patient this quiet. Villa remembers his own screams, remembers the Capitol doctors fretting over him, the beeping of all the devices and fast steps on the corridors.  
  
David doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t said a word since he got back from the arena.  
  
Villa sits on the chair next to the bed and looks at him. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what he should say. Since his first year as a mentor, Villa’s learned his lesson. He’s learned not to get attached to anyone. But now he’s standing here and something is telling him that he can already allow himself to feel something for David, the boy whom nobody expected to come back. And then David moves his hand and Villa quickly stops him because there are tubes he could rip out. And it’s then when David almost melts into the rigid, scratchy white sheets, for the first time not looking like he’s expecting someone to kill him at any given moment, muscles tense and teeth gritted.  
  
They don’t say anything until the morning.  


 

*

  
Villa stares out of the window. The rain is running down the glass, the wind is ripping the leaves from the trees outside the house. If he stares long enough, he will catch a glimpse of David, just a shadow.  
  
Their houses in the Victors’ Village are barely twenty steps far away from each other. And yet they never visit each other, never talk to each other. They know that inevitably they’d end up talking about the Games, because it’s the only thing they have in common, and nobody wants to talk about that. Not in the few months they have between the Reaping, other Games, the Victory Tour.  
  
But sometimes they look at each other through two window panes, unmoving for long minutes, and sometimes Villa tries to wave awkwardly and once, once it seemed to him that David smiled.  
  
Today, however, David doesn’t appear. The crystal clear snakes slithering down the glass scare him enough to stay far away from the window.  


 

*

  
The train is making its way through the land. Villa’s stopped counting the districts they’ve already visited and will still have to visit. It’s the same every time, it’s fake and tiring, the crowd pretending to be happy to see the last Victor while they’re indifferent in the best case, angry in the worst.  
  
This time it’s a bit different as they’re even compassionate. Not bitter nor angry for David didn’t kill anyone in the arena. Villa doesn’t remember if there has ever been a Victor who came back with zero kills on his list. Maybe David is really the first.  
  
It’s the first time after the Games they spend time together, and Villa can see the damage to its full extent. He sees the way David flinches at every louder sound like he can still hear the cannons, the way he prefers to scrub his body for long minutes using a wet towel so that he doesn’t have to stand under the shower or enter the bathtub, he can hear him cry in the dark, wakes up to his screams.  
  
Villa’s scars are clearly visible on his body. David hides them in his heart.  
  
Madrid is the last stop before they go home. The square is full of people. The faces of the two fallen tributes shining on the holographic screens. David stands at the microphone, the cards with his speech ready. Then he looks at one of the screens, at the face of the tribute, and Villa suddenly remembers it was the last one standing against him, the one who had to die so that David could live. He remembers the fight for the makeshift knife, and when it accidentally cut into the tribute’s arm. David didn’t have to do anything after that. The piranha-like mutations took care of the rest.  
  
David’s hands start shaking and the cards fall to the ground like snowflakes. “I wanted to say that I was sorry,” he says and it would be only a whisper if it weren’t for the microphones. “That I was sorry for him, but... I’m not. In that moment in the arena I thought that I killed him. But I didn’t. I saved him. I’m not sorry for him. Because he’s safe now, he’s in a better place, he doesn’t have to live the hell I’m living. What do I have now? A big house where I’m alone with ghosts, a soft bed full of nightmares. I wish I could say that this isn’t what I signed up for, but I didn’t even sign up for anything!”  
  
Villa can see the peacekeepers move in the corners of his eyes, and reacts before they can do anything. He grabs David and pulls him away from the microphones, apologizes to the crowd with a gesture and leads David back inside the building. He meets the angry face of the commander of the peacekeepers. “He doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore,” he says. “Can’t you see the poor boy is completely mad?”  
  
The commander frowns, but then hurries to give orders to the peacekeepers. David glares at Villa angrily, and Villa narrows his eyes and shakes his head slightly, but smiles at the same time, letting him know it was nothing but a game. He knows that David knows perfectly well what he’s saying, knows that his mind is not clouded in the slightest, but at the same time knows how dangerous it is.  
  
And if he couldn’t save anyone in the arena, he will save at least one boy outside of it.  


 

*

  
They keep the game up after that, because it’s the only way Villa can protect David from as much as possible. They indeed declare David mentally unstable and the Capitol even decides that he shouldn’t be a mentor for the next tributes. He doesn’t have to go to the Capitol for the banquets because the rich aren’t interested in the company of a mad boy.  
  
They start visiting each other, too. David comes whenever the sun is shining or when the snow covers the gravel path leading from one house in the Victors’ Village to another. Villa goes to David’s house when it’s raining, careful not to get wet on the way. He stays longer and longer every time, then stays over the night. He’s there when the nightmares come and tries to wake David up before realizing that just holding him until they end works better.  
  
One evening he fills up the giant bathtub that looks more like a swimming pool, and has enough patience with David to persuade him to get in. By the time he does it, the steaming hot water turns just pleasantly warm, and Villa holds David’s hand as he sits there, rigid, muscles tense, his eyes searching the water for any movement, expecting the piranha-like mutations to appear under the surface. Villa hesitates for a while before getting in himself, settling in the tub that is big enough for the two of them.  
  
It becomes one of their rituals, one of the many that keep David sane. The most sane he can be in the middle of the mad world that circulates like blood around a heart that wants to swallow all and give nothing back.  
  
When they are together, they are at least safe from the nightmares. But they know they will never be safe from those who’d want to tear them apart.  
  
The whole world would have to change for them to be safe.  
  
But sometimes in the dark, Villa even believes that one day, it will.


End file.
